The best articles on Web Hosting, Website Design, Site Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Programs, and other subject of interest to Webmasters -- selected by the Cheap Web Hosting Report staff

Monday, June 22, 2009

Selecting The Perfect Content Management Software

by Richard Adams

The days of hard-coding HTML web pages is long gone. Today, there are numerous pieces of software - known as content management software (CMS) - which will make your life much easier.

Rather than having to know how to do anything technical, once you have your CMS set up adding a page to your site is as simple as logging into your password protected administration area and just typing your article into the box. You click "publish" and the article appears on your site.

But there are so many different pieces of content management software out there it can be hard to decide which one you should go with. Many people say that just trying a few out is a good idea and while I agree with them in principle, installing and trying out a number of these pieces of software can be very time consuming so the purpose of this article is to examine a few of the more popular options in the hope that I can cut down on your research time.

Wordpress

Wordpress was created as software to run blogs on but is versatile enough to be used as a full-blown CMS. Wordpress is possibly the easiest CMS of all to install and use and pleasantly there are loads of free themes available to help you customize the look and feel of your site. There are also a large number of free plugins to help to extend the functionality of Wordpress by adding forums, photo galleries, social bookmarking elements and so on.

80% of my own sites currently run on Wordpress and I have been very happy with the results.

Joomla

Joomla is a slightly more heavy-duty CMS that many of today's large community and content sites are built on. Whilst it is a little harder to learn to use than Wordpress, it is more suitable for websites where you are either expecting higher visitor numbers or you want an even more customized feel at the end.

While one can generally tell websites that are made with Wordpress because they have some similarities in design and layout, typically with Joomla the sky is the limit.

Joomla too has a large number of add-ons to help you make it do whatever you want from allowing readers to vote on their favourite articles to interacting with each other like a bone fide social networking website.

Drupal

Drupal is the third and final piece of software I want to mention. It is a popular application among web designers but having tried it myself in the past I must admit that I found it too difficult to get to grips with. This is in contrast to the two previous options which I found I quickly got the hang of and swear by now.

I'm not saying Drupal is bad software in any way, just that my own experience is that it is far more difficult to use than the other options, so I would recommend them over Drupal.

Lastly, be aware that all three of these options are absolutely free, so if you have a web hosting account you can always install just these few and try them out for size.

About This Library

Article sites are flooded with articles on Web Design and Search Engine Optimization (i.e. ways to get your site to show up high in the important search engines). Sometimes dozens of new articles are added every week. Most are not worth the effort it takes to read them. A few, however, are truly interesting and useful.

For this blog, the Cheap Web Hosting Report staff will post the best web design and search engine optimization articles we find on articles sites. We'll try our best to separate the small amount of meat from the piles of bone and gristle.